APN's Ori Nir in Ha'aretz: "The Dangerous Irony of Letting David Friedman Carve Up the West Bank"

Letting a religious zealot like Ambassador Friedman decide the
future of the West Bank is like allowing the NRA chief to distribute the U.S. army's rifles among the most
fanatical gun enthusiasts

by Ori Nir (Mar 09, 2020)

While we are following the roller coaster of American and Israeli politics, and as we seek shelter from the
alarming spread of the Coronavirus, a committee representing the government of Israel and the Trump administration
is carving out vast swaths of the occupied West Bank territory – some 30 percent – for Israel to annex. The mapping
will apparently be completed in a matter of weeks, and an Israeli government could go ahead and annex the territory
shortly after the committee completes its work.

Let it sink in: After decades of efforts by Republican and Democratic U.S. administrations to reign in Israeli
governments’ West Bank settlement practices, the Trump administration is now leading the effort to determine the
contours of the settlements, recognizing as them as part of sovereign Israel.

And who is the U.S. government representative leading this process? Who is the head of the committee? It is the
person who in the past three years has been a chief architect of the Trump administration’s policy on Israel. It is
President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, an ultra-nationalist settlement-supporter, a
religious zealot, who called President Barack Obama an anti-Semite, referred to pro-peace American Jews as "worse
than kapos," and utterly dismissed the two-state solution. Now he's the one deciding where the future border will
be between Greater Israel and the remaining Swiss-cheesed portions of the West Bank, over which the U.S. will allow
the Palestinians to negotiate a future limited autonomy – if that.

Friedman has been an avid supporter of the settlements and the settlers for decades. Letting him carve out the West
Bank and hand off vast portions of it to the settlers would be like allowing National Rifle Association Chief
Executive Wayne LaPierre to distribute the U.S. military’s arsenal of assault rifles among America’s most fanatical
gun enthusiasts.

Think about it: When Trump entered the White House, America’s official policy was that settlements are illegitimate
and “not helpful” to the pursuit of peace. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have over the years
pressured Israeli governments to stop settlement construction or to at least scale it back. Trump’s White House is
now encouraging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme right government to do the opposite: to establish
possibly irreversible facts on the ground by annexing all the settlements in the West Bank. Past U.S. ambassadors
to Israel, armed with maps and satellite photos, used to sit with Israeli government officials, point to rogue
settlement activity and demand accountability. This ambassador is now sitting with Netanyahu’s aides and telling
them which parts of the West Bank, which past U.S. administrations envisioned as part of the future Palestinian
state, could be forever taken from the Palestinians.

When Trump leaves the White House and a new president inhabits the Oval Office, he or she will certainly reverse
many of Trump’s irresponsible policies – domestic and foreign.

This annexation policy, however, may be impossible to reverse. That is precisely what Friedman and his fellow
annexation committee members want. They want to annul prospects for a two-state solution.

Most American Jews, as polls consistently show, strongly support the two-state solution. So do American Jewish
organizations. Even the executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the official
American pro-Israel lobby, expressed explicit support for the two-state solution at the lobby’s annual conference
last week.

As the specter of annexation looms, it is crucial that American Jews, and the organizations that aspire to
represent them, vociferously oppose this disaster, even if it means standing in opposition to the positions of the
current (transitional) government of Israel and Netanyahu who heads it.

Ori Nir, a former Washington correspondent and Palestinian affairs correspondent for Haaretz, is the
communications director for Americans for Peace Now, the sister-organization of Israel’s Peace Now movement.
Twitter: @OriNir_APN